Rolling back, moving ahead

Rolling back the city's tax rates looks good. Real good. And it will feel good for those taxpayers who will pay less.

The question is, will it hurt in the long run?

We certainly endorse the concept of lower taxes. And we applaud the Augusta Commission for voting Tuesday to roll back the millage - thereby turning down a potential $4.2 million windfall that would have come from applying higher property valuations in the county to the current tax rate.

It didn't hurt that five of the 10 commission seats are up for election in November; those commissioners running for re-election no doubt wanted to be seen as being against higher taxes.

Moreover, the Augusta Commis-sion has a lot of damage control to do, coming off a much-criticized trip for four of its members to last month's National Association of Counties meeting in Hawaii - and two failed tax votes last November and this June.

And some officials hope Tuesday's tax rollback will leave a good taste in voters' mouths when it comes time for them to pass judgment on another proposed special purpose local option sales tax proposal in November.

We hope so, too. It would be cutting off our nose to spite our face if we let the 1-cent sales tax lapse after this year.

But Tuesday's action was the easy part.

At some point, commissioners will have to stop spending more than what's coming in. Thanks to the tax rate rollback, this year the city will end up with a $6 million deficit.

City administrator Fred Russell joked at the meeting Tuesday that city staff will be "turning straw into gold in the tower upstairs." But on Wednesday, he was sanguine about the rollback, saying the $6 million can be covered by reserve funds.

But Russell knows, as do most of us, that we'll have to make ends meet someday. He would have liked to do that this year, of course, but he feels next year is mandatory. By then, the reserve fund will be about $13 million - which is a lot of money, to be sure, but not an imprudent amount to have on hand for emergencies.

We just can't continue to consider year-to-year budgeting an "emergency."

Again, we applaud the Augusta Commission's commitment to rolling back tax rates. We would merely encourage them to continue finding efficiencies so that next year's revenues and expenses can be more in line with each other - and reality.

The rolling back was easy - and feels good.

It's the moving ahead that concerns us.